El Naranjo Area 2004

Random Recollections

• El Naranjo is located in a narrow valley between two ranges of low mountains. The name "El Naranjo" means "The Orange".
• One of the first things you notice when you drive over the first mountain range and look down toward El Naranjo, is that there is a lot of smoke in the air. We soon learned that this smoke comes from the processing of sugarcane. You see mid-sized trucks everywhere hauling the cane to the plant. The trucks are loaded so that they are very much top-heavy and you have to keep an eye out to make sure there is enough room to pass when one comes at you. You also notice the sugarcane everywhere on the road and in the right of ways on both sides.
• We stayed at the Hotel Valles near the west end of the main road through El Naranjo. I think it is the only hotel in town. It was very nice, however, with spacious rooms, air-conditioning, private parking, and TV. We turned on the TV (they didn't have many channels) and started watching. It turns out that they show their soap operas at night. We couldn't understand much of what was being said, but that was no impediment to our enjoyment -- we just started making up a story line that seemed to agree with the action before us. It didn't take long before we were doing this each night we remained in Mexico. I'm sure the producers of the actual shows would not have approved of our scripts.
• The first night in El Naranjo, we ate at our first taqueria a short ways toward downtown from our hotel. We found that they love to serve a lot of cilantro and they like things hot. We had recently discovered cilantro before this trip and have used it extensively since. We really loved the food. There was a lot of activity in town and it was fun to be there in a strange town with all of the "goings-on."
• We went birding early the next morning west of El Naranjo on El Maguey road. It was cloudy and cool, but we saw great birds. We got a little wet, but we didn't mind. This is really out in the country in the real Mexico. They still plowed their fields manually or with horses or mules.
• We continued west past El Maguey road and came upon a thick stand of oak trees just before entering Agua Zarca. We stopped and looked for birds for a while. Before long the land owners (a man, his wife, and their small daughter) came out of their house and drove up to us on a four-wheel ATV. The man spoke a little English (he had been in the Army and gone to school in San Antonio for a short while). Jay spoke a little Spanish and together, after a long conversation, they invited us to come into their field among the oak trees. They went back to their house and we crawled under the fence and had a good time birding there for awhile. I got some dark pictures of a Great Horned Owl, which I was able to lighten enough to make out.